A series of high-profile disasters this year, topped by the country’s worst-ever oil spill, has brought unprecedented attention to the country’s coal mines, oil drillers and natural gas pipelines.

Energy industry officials insist their safety record is still second to none as the nation’s thirst for their products continues to grow. But they still have an escalating PR disaster on their hands thanks to the series of fatal and visually powerful events.

“We’re not hearing about wind turbines falling and chopping up chickens on a farm or solar panels frying somebody’s head,” said Daniel J. Weiss, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress Action Fund. “Fossil fuel production, as well as combustion, is a dirty business.”

Congress has kept busy responding to the various disasters, from holding hearings to writing major safety bills dealing with each of the key industrial sectors. And environmental groups have tried — unsuccessfully — to use the events as a launching pad for legislation to cap carbon dioxide emissions.

Environmentalists also see in the series of accidents a golden opportunity to push for other energy-saving measures, highlight problems with the industry’s aging infrastructure and attack government regulators they say are guilty of lax oversight.

They have had help making their case during a five-month period that started in early April, when 29 coal miners died at the Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia, the worst accident for the industry in almost 40 years. That was followed by almost daily coverage of the BP calamity in the Gulf of Mexico, an oil pipeline rupture in Michigan that sent close to 1 million gallons of oil into the Talmadge Creek and Kalamazoo River and a gas pipeline blast in the San Francisco area that killed four and injured 60.

Accidents beyond the U.S. border are also garnering headlines. In Chile, 33 miners have been trapped underground since Aug. 5. China has its worst-ever oil spill — bigger than the Exxon Valdez disaster — in the major port city of Dalian. And there have been a series of big leaks and fires during the past few weeks at Venezuela’s state-run oil company.

“The events of this year have been more dramatic, and that visibility is cumulative,” said Oliver Houck, an environmental law professor at Tulane University.

The BP spill, in particular, ranks alongside the U.S. economy and the Haitian earthquake as one of the biggest media stories of 2010 — staying on the front page for more than 100 days during the spring and summer because of a series of unpredicted twists and turns in the joint effort to stop the leak and then contain and clean it up.

“Very few [stories] have that kind of dynamic,” said Mark Jurkowitz, associate director at the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism.

Statisticians have a long way to go before they can say whether 2010 is the fossil fuel industry’s worst in terms of fatalities or other measurements. The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ most recent numbers on accidents in oil and gas extraction stop at 2008. They show 2006 had the most fatalities during the past decade, at 192.

“It’s perhaps a little unique in that we’re seeing over the last four months a run of really dramatic disasters,” said Tim Warman, executive director of the National Wildlife Federation’s global warming solutions program and co-author of a July report on the industry. “But it’s not unique that we’re having these disasters. They happen frequently.”

NWF and other critics of the energy industry say the perpetual accident rates highlight the need for everything from carbon caps to an end to fossil fuel subsidies. They’d like to see Congress raise the $75 million liability limit for oil spill damages. And they want lawmakers to take notice of an aging energy infrastructure that includes 250,000 miles of oil and gas pipelines spread around the country, as well as federal and state agencies that haven’t enforced rules on the books.

House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Nick Rahall (D-W.Va.) blamed many of this year’s fossil-fuel-related accidents on the George W. Bush administration’s “failure to invest in infrastructure and worker safety, coupled with a regulatory regime that put those who were being regulated in charge of their own oversight.

“That was a recipe for just these types of disasters,” Rahall said.

The Transportation Department last week asked Congress to approve 40 additional safety inspectors and boost fines for the most serious violations involving deaths, injuries or major environmental harm. A bill to overhaul the federal agency charged with oil drilling inspections and permitting, as well as expand the liability cap for oil spill disasters, passed the House in July but has been stuck in the Senate.

Coal-mine safety legislation — giving the federal government more power to shut down violators and increasing criminal penalties — passed in July out of the House Education and Labor Committee. A Senate companion bill faces industry opposition and an uncertain future, with its lead sponsor, West Virginia Democrat John Rockefeller, threatening to take the measure straight to the floor as early as this week.

But the prospect that any of the bills will make it into law is uncertain as the congressional session winds down.

Sen. Mark Begich (D-Alaska) said part of the problem with the oil spill bill may be the recent shift in public attention as the issue falls off the front pages. “It makes it tougher as its own individual item, but I think it makes it possible in the larger context of energy policy,” he said.

Industry allies on Capitol Hill are also pushing back against policies that would stymie development of fossil fuels in the wake of the disasters.

Gulf Coast lawmakers have blasted the Obama administration for its decision to impose a temporary offshore-drilling moratorium after the BP spill.

Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) last week asked why oil was being singled out, evoking the West Virginia coal-mining accident, a February 2008 explosion at a Georgia sugar refinery that killed 29 people and more than a decade’s worth of airplane crashes.

“I recite these statistics not to single out the aviation, coal or sugar industries as being unsafe,” Landrieu said at a hearing of her Senate Small Business Committee. “Instead, I am highlighting these industrial accidents to illustrate how radical and unprecedented the blanket moratorium on deepwater drilling appears in comparison to the reactions that have typically accompanied industrial disasters.”

Several industry and labor officials said this year’s accidents underscore the need for better safety practices but not for a transition away from natural gas, coal or oil.

“When we pull things out of the ground, and we pull things out of the seabed, and we drill in the Rockies, we occasionally make mistakes,” said Luke Popovich, a spokesman at the National Mining Association. “But there it is. We’re a growing country with 300 million people. We’re big energy users. And we’ve got a lot of energy. Those are, while regrettable, not in themselves reasons to turn our backs on fossil fuels.”